


It's Possible We'll Never Know What Really Happened

by hbub1201



Series: Learn as they Go [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Badass Billy, Desperate Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:51:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5187611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hbub1201/pseuds/hbub1201
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which honesty abounds and I still suck at summaries :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Possible We'll Never Know What Really Happened

"I didn't want you dead!"

"What?" Billy asked sceptically, as he stopped his retreat and slowly turned around to face his captain.

"You said before," Flint desperately tried to explain, through the fog that made up his thoughts, "That I would likely never know the truth of what happened that night."

The flame haired man raised his own head to look into the taller mans eyes, in a silent plea for him to remember that conversation. To remember that night, after Billy's miraculous return, when Flint had questioned his reasons for helping him.

Billy eyed the other man warily, unsure of why they were having this conversation now, but eventually he nodded his acknowledgement, careful not to let his face give away anything else but his working memory.

"Well you're right," The solemn captain confirmed, "I don't know what the fuck happened that night. One minute we were in the clear, the next an explosion. One minute we were struggling against the rigging and the next you were gone."

"There's a bit more to it than that, Captain." Billy snorted, despondant as he could muster.

"Yes," Flint agreed begrudgingly, "We were talking about an involvement outside of my control." The captain raised his arm sharply, to cut off the interruption he saw dancing in his bosun's eyes. "You wanted answers to questions I didn't want to answer, assurances I couldn't give. And I just wanted you to let it go."

"Tow the line?" Billy responded scornfully.

Flint sagged as he exhaled. That is exactly what he'd wanted. How he'd underestimated this man. How he'd failed to see the potential in him, the brilliance behind his mind. Of course he'd known, even then, that Billy was strong and dependable, that he was brave and loyal. But to have missed his true value, his intelligence, his reason... Flint was a man who'd made many mistakes in his time, trusted the wrong people, not trusted the right ones, but not recognising Billy for who he truly was, what he could have been... That was the mistake that stuck out as his most absurd.

"Yes," Flint reluctantly conceded. "I wanted the assurance of your silence."

Billy snorted again, at the overly colourful language and the basic admission it tried to cover up, but he didn't adjust his expression, he tightened his fists and remained stoic and silent. 

Then Flint did something neither of them expected. He stepped forward.

The captain raised one hand placatingly, almost pleadingly, then he continued.

"I wanted your silence, bit I did not want your death."

He said the words so boldly, so firmly and so serious that Billy momentarily let his mask of indifference slip in order to search for some dishonesty in Flint's words. But he found none and it was in this small lapse that Flint found the determination to continue.

"I never wanted you dead," he affirmed, "I didn't want you dead when you pointed a gun at me in Guthries office. I didn't want you dead when you first questioned my decisions, or the plentiful times after that. I didn't want you dead when I thought you may have been swayed by Morley and his stories about the Barlow Witch, or when you continued to push your way into my business, my history. I didn't want you dead when I realised the crew would happily follow you into a mutiny should I not give you the answers you desired and I most certainly did not want you dead when we were arguing against those ropes." Flint's own masks had fallen now. His mask of disregard, his mask of invulnerability, his mask of ultimate strength. The captain was looking up to Billy now, his hand having lowered somewhere during his speech but his eyes picking up its pleading.

"I reached out," he all but whispered, "I reached my hand to yours because I did not want you dead, I wanted you saved... I wanted," he exhaled angrily, "To save you. But you are right, I don't know what the fuck happened that night because one minute your hand was in mine and you were safe, and the next my hand was clutching air."

"Capt-"

"One moment," Flint interrupted aggressively, "I was on my way to finally obtaining all that I needed to fulfil all that I had set out to accomplish and the next I am no further from that dream. Yet still I found myself locked in my cabin failing to control emotions I had long since convinced myself no longer existed within me. Unable to do anything but sit and stare out of the window into the vast nothingness of the ocean, feeling more bare and alone than I have since our dreams crumbled around our ankles the first time around. Finally on my way to putting right all that I had failed in only unable to find joy in any of it all because in one moment you were gone and I knew I could do nothing to get you back!"

"Flin-"

"And when Silver brought the news that you had washed up on the beach, that you were alive after all, my first thought should have been, as his was, 'what would you tell the men?'. But instead my only thoughts were what could you possibly think of me, of ho you must hate me for letting go, how you must blame me. Because no matter whether I'd meant to let go or not you did end up in that water because of me. And whatever joy I felt in hearing that you were back was tempered only by the fear that you'd hate me for it."

"Captain Fli-"

"And then he explained how you told the crew that I'd tried to save you, that you'd simply fallen when your hand slipped from my grasp. I'd dared to believe, then, that this was the truth as you saw it. That somehow you believed I hadn't wanted you hurt. And when I saw you sitting in the hut, alive as the day we first picked you up, I felt the air in my lungs for the first time since I'd lost you. Only you didn't believe it. As I raised my hand to, once again, hold yours in my palm, you could barely look at me. You hesitated at my touch, stiffened the closer I came and let go the moment you were able and I knew then, in that moment, that I was right. That you hated me for letting you fall. I was driven mad with the uncertainty of why, then, were you helping me, why the support for a man you ha-"

"JAMES!" Billy finally shouted. The indifference had fallen from his face, replaced by uncertainty, and his own arms were raised in front of him. Flint was the vision of a man who'd just awoke from a terrible dream, eyes wide and eyebrows pinched together in confusion. It was as if he was only now realising he'd been talking aloud and the realisation was not a good one, the flight or fight battle raging between his piercing eyes. He'd been talking so fast, and so honest, that all he could do was concentrate on his rapid breathing and stare at the muscled man in front of him, praying for any reaction to come soon.

 

-X-

 

Flint was a mass of rage and determination. Billy watched as he yelled to the crew of his plans to retrieve what was rightfully theirs, of the gold he'd promised them that was snatched from their grasp by betrayel and greed. He watched as the crew cheered for their captain even as they shook with fear. Flint's eyes scanned the crowd, nodding at Silver and several select crew members who had proven themselves high in the captains favour, even Vane got acknowledgement from the embittered man stood front and center. But his eyes brushed past Billy's so fast that the bosun's stomach sank... He was planning something, Billy knew immediately, something he wouldn't like.

After the cheering had subsided and the work had begun, Flint stormed to his cabin in a hail of angry motion, pent up exhaustion and aggression boiling over to cover the loss of the last few days. The loss of Miranda, the loss of the last shred connecting him to the England he once knew, the loss of Officer James McGraw and the memories that held with it. Billy briefly considered leaving this fight for another day, allowing his captain time to grieve all that he'd lost and then broaching the subject when he was more likely to listen to whatever reason he could muster. But if he didn't do this now he knew he never would, so Billy peeled his way through the crowd and followed after a man he'd spent years of his life avoiding any close proximity with.

"What?" Flint asked forcefully as the younger man entered his quarters.

Of all the reactions Billy expected, this was not one. He thought he would be greeted with a dismissal, a fight or ignored completely, but this? The captain almost sounded resigned.

"What are you planning?" The younger man responded, straight to the point.

"As I told the crew, I'm getting our gold back?"

"I though the gold was for Nassau, to protect it, well Nassau has the gold now, isn't that what you wanted?"

"No," Flint slumped into the chair behind his desk, running his hands through his hair and wiping the sweat from his brow. "Nassau has nothing. The gold is in the hands of an uppity whore and a quartermaster playing the part of a pirate captain, neither of whom have any regard to what we are facing."

"So expain it to them?" Billy suggested calmly, slowly approaching the desk and leaning against it at Flint's side, a place he has found alarmingly comfortable of late.

Flint let out a loud gasp of laughter, "You're not that naive Billy, nor are you that stupid, you now what I'm planning or you wouldn't be here."

"Evacuate them with force and leave the whole place demolished in your wake?" The younger man snorted, "Maybe if you destroy it enough the Navy will take one look and deam us no longer a threat?"

"We remove them for the pedestal they have placed themselves on and then we can rebuild Nassau to withstand any Navy attack."

"And how man lives do we sacrifice to accomplish that?"

"However many necessary!" Flint shouted, shoving himself up from his chair and banging his fists on the table beside Billy, who didn't so much as flinch, just shook his head solemnly and remained quiet.

"You knew what this was Billy," the captain said, calmer now that the initial anger had been let out. "You agreed my methods were needed, that's why you're here remember."

"No," the bosun said firmly, "I agreed you were needed, not your methods."

"What else have I to offer?" The captain shouted back at the still calm Billy.

"Insights," he replied without a breath, "Exerience, strategy."

"This is my strategy!"

"No!" Billy shouted back, throwing himself up from the desk and spinning to face the angerng captain, Flint did not flinch either. "This is a reaction!"

The two stared each other down for what felt like minutes of tense silence, jaded only by the harsh breaths and outside noises of the rest of the crew at work.

"They stole from you so you must teach them a lesson," Billy continued, the fire still burning in his eyes. "There are other ways this can be done, peaceful ways."

"That's not who I am Billy, that is who Gates was, who you are, but that is not who I am!"

"No, you're Captain Flint, feared across the seven seas, as brutal as you are angry and as skilled as you are bloodthirsty."

The silence returned, only this time there was a shift in the anger, it was still there only both men seemed to be feeling it for different reasons, reasons neither could interpret on the other.

"That's how you see me?" Flint asked then, the anger seeping from him as realisation dawned on him. "As a monster out only for blood?"

Billy looked to him captain, silent as he analysed him, trying to decipher if that was real emotion in his voice or whether he playing on Billy's resolve. "I believe there is more to you than any of us know?"

"And you're scared of me for it?"

"No," Billy responded immediately, honestly.

Flint smirked then, like he was searching for a lie but was surprisingly pleased not to find it. "But you were?"

"I was scared of what you meant for my crew."

"Your crew?" He remarked, with eyebrows raised.

"Yes," Billy responded boldly, "My brothers, each one of them, my friends, my family, my crew."

"Now that is terrifying," Flint snorted sarcastically.

"But they're not yours are they? They are just a means to an end for you, replacable, expendable. They are not 'your' crew? They are just 'a' crew, one that happens to be serving your purpose for now, following your orders. And when that changes? When they all die in your name? Or when they decide to no longer tow the line? What happens then?"

Downing a whiskey he had poured for himself Flint snorted again and smiled a smile that told Billy he had no intention of answering that question because he knew Billy already had the only answer he would believe.

"And what about me?" the bosun asked then, partly to fill the silence but partly to hear the answer, even though he was dreading hearing it, hearing that to FLint he too was nothing but a pawn. Flint turned with a sarcastic retort on the tip of his tongue that fell immediately from his grasp as his eyes landed on the taller man standing far closer than he had remembered him being. The look on Billy's face was one that mirrored a look he'd seen in his own reflection countless times. Of badly hidden hope and fear. Of a longing for an answer you knew would never come. 

"Billy," the captain said placatingly, softer than he could ever remember being before.

But it was that softness, that hesitation that Billy mistook for patronising, or maybe even manipulation, that had the young man turn sharply away from the electric warmth that only came from the two of them standing side by side, close enough to breath the other in even though neither of them had the courage to take it further. "Just forget it," Billy ordered bruskly as he marched toward the door, toward his only escape from the intoxicating mand before him.

Flint saw it then. How even though Silver was his quartermaster, how Mr Scott had years more experience, how Vane was as deadly as he was quick. Even though Gates had been his ally since he first took up the sword against England and Eleanor had been his most public advocate. Even though Mirander had been been his reason for going forward and Thomas had been his drive start the journey in the first place. Even though all of these people had had a worth to him in one form or another it was Billy, and only Billy that he wanted by his side now. It was Billy he craved and itched for. Billy he fought for and against, Billy he fought beside. He finally let himself see all of the touches that didn't mean nothing, all of the looks that shouldn't have been as important and they each were.

Watching Billy walking away now, getting closer to the dorr with every step, felt like a mistake he would never be able to come back from. Flint knew that if he let Billy go now, it would lead to damage that couldn't be repaired and it he was a selfless man then he should probably let it happen. He should let Billy walk back into his life without Flint at its centre, because that is what he would demand if he stops Billy now. That's what he would demand if this next conversation were to go as he hoped... Hoped... Wasn't that the kicker in all of this... For the first time since the very early days with Thomas, James Flint had hope. So he spoke... 5 little words... "I didn't want you dead."

 

-X-

 

"Flint," Billy said again, calmer now but no less uncertain. Shock at what he'd heard, shock at what he was about to say back. "I didn't escape."

"What?" Flint breathed brokenly, floored by the abrupt change of subject, the blatant dismissal of all of the guards he just dropped.

"Hume offered me a deal," the bosum replied quickly, desperate to get to the point before flight won the battle in Flint's head. "I was to be released with a pardon for me and 9 others in exchange for your capture."

Flint's masks came back in force, his face morphed to one of extreme anger once again and he snarled at Billy in a way that would have most men trembling in their boots. But Billy had come too far and he was determined to continue. "I said whatever I had to say to get out of there but I had no intention of ever following through with the deal."

Flint growled in response, his shield now firmly back in place, he walked back to his desk and leant back against it, mirroring Billy's position from earlier, arms crossed against his chest.

"I had to tell Dufresne," he blurted next, internally kicking himself for his sudden lack of tact. "He questioned why I was supporting you after everything that had happened and when me telling him about the Navy wasn't enough I had to tell him that I had a back up plan."

"If I didn't come through with my promise to save Nassau, then you could always just ship me off to Hume and walk away intact." He presumed bitterly.

Billy nodded. "Another plan I had no intention of following, only Dusfresne was more impatient than I gave him credit for and after you called time on the attack against Vane he decided enough was enough and he agreed to gather the men he thought most willing to betray you and we'd meet to capture you in your sleep." Another snort from the captain and another silent plea from Billy that he just listen and put off judgement. "I met him under cover of darkness and sent him and those he'd chosen away, I didn't tell you then because I didn't want to add further mess to an already tangled situation and I'm only telling you this now because I need to be honest, about everything, so you know you can trust me. So you know I'm being honest about what I say next!"

Flint raised his head then, desperate curiosity breaing through the veil of anger that was still trying to encapsulate his face. He remained silent and let Billy compose himself before he continued.

"I don't think you're a monster," the younger man said earnestly and another layer of Flint's anger subsided as he looked into the other mans eyes. "I think you've done some monstrous things in direct response to monstrous things being done to you," he compromised, knowing that Flint would never trust what he was about to admit if he suger coated the truth now. "But I meant what I said, you are the only one who can lead Nassau through what is to come. Not because you are bloodthirsty but because you are strong. Because you are the best of us at being the worst, you will do what it takes and, despite trying so damn hard not to, you will feel every part of it. Every loss and every failed attempt, the bad decisions more than the good."

Billy took a cautious step forward, eye's not braking their contact with Flints. The two locked in an endless stare that was peeling away all of their forced indifference and months of unacknowledged yearning.

"And then at the end of it," the bosun said quietly, not needing to shout anymore as he took another tentative step closer to his captain, Flint making no move to flinch from the possible contact. "When all is done and Nassau is free, because I do believe that you can win this war for us... When the rest of the World goes back to normal I believe that you will too. You will struggle with it and you will fight it because you are a stubborn fool with more intelligence than actual sense but you will get there and I want to be by your side when you do."

So close that they could once again feel each others breath bounce off there skin, Billy came to a stop and Flint raised himself from the desk on which he was perched. All masks completely forgotten now as two sets of blues eyes met and finally gave up the struggle for dominance.

"McGraw," Flint finally breathed into the silence.

"I know," Billy smiled softly, "I read the letter."

Flint let out a jolt of laughter that had both men smiling briefly before the heat between them won out and the staring resumed. The two were caught in a sort of desperate stalemate, both having expressed their desires in the only way they knew how, neither sure whether to give in to them though because after that there was no going back and they both knew things would get far messier before they got any better. They stood there, arms by their sides, barely a inch seperating the length of their bodies, breathing in disjointed synchronicity, want and need filling every part of them, but caution holding them both back until finally, after minutes of pinched eyebrows, suffocating silence and a warmth that neither could dare to comprehend, a slow advance of heads, a slower parting of lips and a sharp intake of breath was vicously interrupted by a banging on the door. 

"What!" Flint shouted venomously, without moving back from Billy, without breaking eye contact. 

"Where the fuck is Billy?" Silver's voice pierced through the wooden barricade but still Billy and Flint did not withdraw from one another. "Joji and Howell are at each others throats and it seems, despite all of your talk about the men wanting, no wait, trusting me as their quartermaster, Billy is, in fact, the only one the crew actively listen to. So, under instruction from those not currently locked in a bitter fight to the wounding, I find myself on a rather unfortunate venture to find our wayward bosun, unfortuntate because I have no fucking idea where he is hiding, but also because I have only one leg and am still relearning how to fucking walk!"

Not a single movement from either Billy or Flint for the duration of Silver's tirade, nor through the frantic knocking that followed, or the subsequent calls of "Hello?", and "Well, do you know where he is?", or "Fuck's sake, are you gonna help sort this out?", followed by a rather sarcastic "Captain..."

It was only when the knocking started again and Silver demanded entry so he could hide out in there too that Billy finally exhaled and blinked his eyes. Flint watched as the bosun closed his eyes for another, longer exhale, then reluctantly stepped away from his captain, turning swiftly toward the, still thudding door.

"Go away!" Flint shouted then, loud enough to shake the walls of his cabin, in one swift movement the Walrus captain had pushed himself away from the desk he had been pressed against and darted across the room. With one hand on Billy's shoulder, he spun the other man fludily around to face him and the other hand didn't hesitate for a second before reaching up to encircle the bosuns neck and finally pull him down to crash their lips together.

The captain was immediately, and unforgivingly pushed straight back against the desk as they continued to devour each other in a fierce release of desire that had them both refusing to breath in order to not give up contact for even a moment. Hands roamed and gripped and claimed, as they kissed and breathed and pressed and moaned and everything else fell away from existance as the two men allowed themselves this small moment of freedom from all of what was to come next, both knowing that this had to be the first moment of many because after having wanted this for so long and now having finally felt it, tasted it, there was no way they could give it up now.


End file.
